In his 1934 essay, “A Negro Nation Within a Nation”, WEB DuBois wrote:

The colored people of America are coming to face the fact quite calmly that most white Americans do not like them, and are planning neither for their survival, nor for their definite future if it involves free, self-assertive modern manhood. This does not mean all Americans. A saving few are worried about the Negro problem; a still larger group are not ill-disposed, but they fear prevailing public opinion. The great mass of Americans are, however, merely representatives of average humanity. They muddle along with their own affairs and scarcely can be expected to take seriously the affairs of strangers or people whom they partly fear and partly despise.

For many years it was the theory of most Negro leaders that this attitude was the insensibility of ignorance and inexperience, that white America did not know of or…

1. Don’t be a troll.
It never ceases to amaze me how negative some
voices can be when they are amplified by a 140-
character tweet. Using social media to foam at the
mouth and post hateful thoughts about strangers
says a lot about a person and their state of
happiness. If you find yourself taking frequent
trips under the bridge, maybe it’s time for a
break in order to assess why attacking others
while hiding behind a keyboard brings you joy.
But then again, Lauren Sivan might have summed
up trolling best during a recent segment of “Big
Deal or No Big Deal?” on Good Day LA, “We’re
awful, awful people apparently.”
2. Avoid rambling about how terrible your life is.
Everyone has an occasional “ice cream cone in
the dirt” kind of day, but be mindful about how
often you tweet about them. Most people (myself
included) don’t want to read endless “woe is me”
postings in their timelines about the sad shambles
your life is in. Granted, we all need to vent, but
save this type of confiding for your offline IRL
friends. Most of your followers are people who
have never met you face-to-face, and they
probably won’t want to after reading your Debbie
Downer tweets.
3. Twitter beefs are useless.
Endlessly arguing with some Internet shut-in who
gets off on picking fights on social media is
pointless. People sometimes do this to help
establish their online reputation (strange that
people think they can build a brand off of
fighting under the guise that it’s debating). Other
times, they just want to get under your skin, and
engaging with them is a surefire way of letting
them know it’s working. It’s similar to an ill-
tempered child who is seeking attention. Respond
and it will only get worse. Leave the juvenile
feuding to the trolls in the Internet sandbox and
block them. It’s much more effective and will give
you peace of mind.
4. Tweet it as soon as it pops into your head.
Contrary to what many social media experts will
tell you, there is no ideal hour to post on Twitter.
I’ve posted tweets sometimes during a 4:00 a.m.
bout of insomnia and woke up later to find them
retweeted several times over. Bottom line: If a
tweet is going to impact with an audience, it will
regardless of the time of day it goes up. Therefore,
as soon as you think it, share it.
5. It’s Twitter, not marriage.
When someone makes a decision to follow you, he
or she isn’t entering into a contractual union
where they swear allegiance to you for their
entire Twitter existence. People follow, and then
sometimes they unfollow. You shouldn’t get
offended when it happens. Continue to be
confident in your content and keep it moving.
Honestly, some of you act like you just got served
divorce papers when you tweet about losing
followers.
6. Go easy on favoriting tweets.
The one function I have never really understood
is favoriting, and now that Twitter is posting
favorited tweets into timelines, users really need
to start exercising a little restraint. Do it too much
and you’ll risk looking like some crazed fan à la
Kathy Bates in Misery . Besides, do you really
think that you’re going to go through your
Favorites list and reread all those starred tweets
in your spare time?
7. Don’t take Twitter (or any other social media
network) too seriously.
This one is probably the most important thing I’ve
figured out. Whether you’re promoting a business
or just passing time while waiting for the next
Star Wars movie to arrive in theaters, social
media is a great tool for interacting with others.
However, it is by no means the most important
tool in the kit. Yes, it can help build a brand, but
if some kind of global cellular data and Internet
outage were to ever occur, we would be left with
the basics: verbal communication, handwritten
notes, and face-to-face interaction. So take this
whole social media thing with a grain of salt and
have fun with it. Market your business… crack
some jokes… entertain and inform. Twitter
enhances communication, but it shouldn’t be
regarded as the only source for information.
I think I’ve kept a good perspective about my
digital footprint in social media and the level of
importance it has in my life. I enjoy it; however,
it doesn’t completely define who I am as a person.
Some time in the distant, geriatric future, I’ll
probably reflect and wonder why I tweeted so
much to begin with. So here’s one final humorous
thought — via one of my tweets, of course — that
stops me from getting caught up in social media’s
hype and drama. Hopefully, it helps you too.

You may think you know what you’re getting yourself into when you launch a startup, but really, there is so much you just can’t understand until you’ve got some time under your belt. Unfortunately, the business could very well go bust while you’re ironing out the kinks. Instead of learning completely by trial and error, why not avoid a few common mistakes and misconceptions about that first year by reading what a few folks who have been there before have to say.

1. “Unfortunately, investors will lie to you. They will tell you straight to your face they are interested, want to learn more and actually want to invest. This, most likely, is a lie.”Startup CEO Nick Hughes has several hard-earned pearls of wisdom about the first year of business, but his warning that many investors are just looking for cheap information is probably the most valuable for guarding both your money and your time.

2. “A lot of what we then considered ‘working hard’ was actually ‘freaking out.’ Freaking out included panicking, working on things just to be working on something, not knowing what we were doing, fearing failure, worrying about things we needn’t have worried about and other time-consuming activities.”And yet, despite “not knowing what they were doing” and everything else, Caterina Fake and her husband managed to mold image-hosting site Flickr out of their plans for a MMOG.

3. “I set a goal of getting at least 10 ‘no’s’ each day — that way I knew I was working hard enough. Depending on your business, people are going to shoot down your ideas all the time. Use that negative energy as motivation to make something positive.”Luckily for Matt Moore, the CEO of men’s cologne company Moonshine, his persistence paid off with a lot of yeses and the business found success.

4. “There are a lot of startup costs — entrance fees to trade shows, gas and food when you spend your day meeting with people, having your website built and hosted, company vehicles, mailings, phone costs, business cards, brochures — that I don’t think people even think about when they start a business.”Small business owner Julee Wasserman took a 10-month community college program to ensure she was factoring in all those hidden costs in getting her event-planning company Gorge Tours off the ground.

5. “There is so much information to take advantage of out there on the Internet for small business owners. Use these incredible resources to help learn new things and propel your business forward. With a jam-packed schedule, it’s easy to convince yourself that you don’t have the time to waste reading blogs and articles. But you must find a way to fit it in.”Hey, we’re big fans of blogs and all the advice they can give struggling business owners. We’re glad to hear marketing firm Webonize’s founder Martina Iring is a fan, too.

6. “If you can’t sell yourself, you don’t want to work for yourself.”Bryan Beaty’s consulting company Decomplexification (an ironically complex name) would have gone under had he not hooked up with a group of marketers looking to start their own business. But he learned that being able to sell is vital to a small business owner, and that he hated selling. If you hate it, too, you might want to follow his example.

7. “I was actually really good at thinking about the big picture in the beginning when everything was fresh and new. But as the year went on I started throwing myself into client work more than I should have and not doing a good enough job leading other aspects of the company.”Todd Zeigler serves as operations chief at D.C. “digital agency” Brick Factory. As he says, the slope from heading operations to obsessing over single jobs is a slippery one for a startup exec.

8. “The last 10%it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.”Even with passion like his — to create a place for “beautiful things worth preserving”— Etsy co-founder Rob Kalin learned the final push for your startup may be the hardest part of the entire process.

9. “I’ve noticed that it does tend to consume me. 12 to 14-hour days are pretty common. Basically, the business is you, and you become the business.”Her business may be called Fluff Cupcakery, but entrepreneur Jessica James put in Wall Street hours in order to get it off the ground in its first year.

10. “Don’t raise too much money.”StumbleUpon stayed self-funded through not just 1, but 4 years, a move CEO Garrett Camp credited with teaching him and his team to be efficient and to prioritize.

11. “Entrepreneurs are, by nature, usually confident, positive and optimistic, but if success in startups is the outcome of a million random factors, inspiring help from others is among the most important.”In his first year helping make Greatist the fastest-growing fitness site on the web, founder Derek Flanzraich discovered the beauty of accepting help from friends.

12. “When you start something on your own, you’re so much more emotionally invested in it than you are with your corporate job. All the excitements and disappointments are heightened. You absolutely can’t afford to run your business solely based on how you feel.”Though she’s technically no longer a boomerang kid, Lindsay Hunt started her own media company, no doubt with the help of her knowledge gained as a blogger. It was her experience that you’ll go through discouragement, boredom, anger and many other emotions, but you have to keep those at bay to make it to 365 days.

13. “There are huge advantages for working at a startup, but those come later as the result of very hard work. The day-to-day is not glamorous. You have to be resourceful because you don’t have people who have been there, done that and have guidelines on the best practices and lists of answers. Everything you’ll be doing in a startup will be a brand new learning experience.”At just 25, InstaEDU CEO Alison Johnston is wise beyond her years. She’s found being the top dog means doing whatever needs doing, and often that’s the drudgery work.

14. “[The second time] we only talked to investors who had run their own business before, and did so successfully. This is because they are easier to deal with, they are significantly smarter and they actually understand the problem we are solving, and get it instantly.”After wasting time dealing with “institutional investors who didn’t get her problem,” inDinero CEO Jessica Mah wised up and took her pitch to venture capitalists who spoke her language. The technique worked so well she had to turn people away.15.“A negative correlation exists between how good your idea is and how much the slow masses will understand it — at least in year one. Don’t worry about this – they will get it in year two or three. If it’s a good idea they will actually love it in year two or three and not even remember the fact that they ever doubted you.”Blogger, angel investor and several-time startup guy Jason Calacanis makes no bones about the fact that great ideas take time to catch on. He’s been through it all and lived to tell about it, and so will you.

Managing one’s financial life is very important. A good financial history makes an individual’s life easy. This is because he or she will be able to access any type of loan where never he or she needs one. Banks consider such people as individuals who are capable of promptly and successfully paying their loans. To make sure you remain on good books with creditors, it is important to avoid bad credit.Bad credit results from individual having low credit score. Low credit score is normally caused by failing to pay ones loans.

Always pay your bills on time. Keep track of all your bills and make sure that all of them are paid when they are due. If possible you can start the habit of paying your bill like a week before the day they are due. Late payment of your bills will greatly affect your credit score. It will also easily land you in the bad credit group.

Another way to prevent bad is by limiting how you use your credit card. Some people will normally use their cards until they run out of money; if you want to have good credit score, limit your usage to 70% of you card limit. This will create the impression that you do not need loans to keep surviving.

Pay all you bills and do not push some of it forward. Postponing paying of your bills gives creditors the impression you cannot manage finances. Creditors do not like loaning people who they believe are already in financial problem because it is a great risk to loan that group of clients.

Another way to prevent bad credit is by budgeting and strictly following your budget. Budgeting for one’s income helps control one’s expenditure. This will reduce the needs of one taking loan and hence reduced chance of ending in bad credit..